


A Way With Words

by lunrdarling



Category: IASIP, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Soulmate AU, and decided to post it here, and i went with this, someone on tumblr asked me to do a soulmate au prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 00:44:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunrdarling/pseuds/lunrdarling
Summary: When you’re 16, you get a journal. You can write anything in the journal, except for your own name and location. What you write or draw in your journal, your soulmate can see in theirs (and vice versa). This makes for an interesting experience when your soulmate doesn’t know how to read or write correctly.





	A Way With Words

Dee was struggling. She sat at the desk in her room, hunched over the journal as she looked through the most recent pages. Of course she wasn’t surprised when she saw that none of it made sense. There were drawings of all kinds. Some were clearly just doodles, where others she thought might be attempts at spelling out sentences or thoughts without using words. Those were the ones she was most interested in. 

This had been a week that she’d mostly just let her soulmate do all the writing. Sometimes she’d write in the occasional comment (usually an arrow pointing towards something with “what?” written beside it), but mostly she just waited and read. 

Nothing had been written, by her or her soulmate, all day. Occasionally she’d check to see if there was anything new, but she continued to be disappointed every time she looked. Instead of doing her homework, Dee decided that maybe she’d try to crack some codes from the last few pages. 

The journal had been open to the most recent blank page for a few minutes when finally, something started to appear. It was slow and the ink left deep imprints on the page, like he pressed too hard into the paper. He always had. 

She furrowed her brows as she watched him start to draw. 

Just a frowny face. 

She wrote down a few question marks beside it. 

Nothing happened for awhile and she started to think maybe he’d just drawn the frown and then put the journal away. Just as she was about to do the same thing, he started to write again. 

There were a few backwards letters and the spelling was atrocious. 

She couldn’t figure it out. 

“Bad day?” She simply wrote instead. 

More waiting. 

“Ya.” She got in reply. 

They both said nothing for awhile. She could try to ask him what happened, or what was wrong exactly. But she didn’t really think he had the ability to spell that out for her– literally.

When he finally started drawing again, she could tell there was a point to it. 

Stick figures started to appear on the page. One after another after another until there were about seven in a clump, standing together. He drew large open-mouthed smiles on their faces. They were pointing in the same direction at something that hadn’t been drawn yet. 

Then, he started to draw on the opposite side of the paper, where they were pointing. Another stick figure appeared. This one was significantly shorter than all the rest. He drew a frown on this stick figures face. The word “me” (with a backwards “e”) appeared next to the sad figure, with an arrow pointing directly at it. 

“People laughed at you?” She wrote under the drawing, frowning at it. 

Two underlines appeared under the word “laughed”, and then two question marks under that. 

She thought for a second and then wrote out, “laffed”.

“Ya.”

Dee didn’t know what to say. He seemed to get teased a lot. He didn’t seem to want to tell her why, and she didn’t really try to push on the matter. Even if she had tried, there was no way to know whether he would understand her or not. 

Once, he had tried to explain it to her. He drew what might have been a garbage can, and then a pig-like animal beside it. After staring at it for a long time, she’d asked him if they put him in the garbage can. He’d said no, and stopped talking to her for the rest of the night. They didn’t really talk about why anymore after that. 

Instead of writing any words now, she just drew a frown like he had at the beginning of their conversation. 

Nobody wrote anything for a long time. She sat with the journal open just in case, though. 

After about three hours of anxiety and pretending to do her homework, she bit down hard on her lip and picked up the pen that had been resting on the page of her journal. She held it hesitantly over the page for at least a minute or two. 

It hurt her heart that she couldn’t help him feel better, and that she couldn’t understand him as well as she wanted to. She was trying to figure out his ways of communicating. It was hard. She felt like she’d failed him by not having figured it out after a year and a half of having their journals. It must have been frustrating for him, with her being confused all the time. 

Finally, she put the pen to the page. She drew a small heart a few lines below where their last conversation ended, with a simple “sorry” after it as a bad attempt to comfort him. Doing it made her nervous. Her heart beat harder in her chest. Was it a bad idea?? Soulmates or not, it was still nerve wracking to send any kind of affection his way. 

After an excruciatingly slow six minutes, a poorly drawn heart appeared next to her own, with the words “it’s ok” (with a backwards “k”) beside it. 

A warm blush flooded her cheeks and her stomach flipped. She sat back in her chair and started at his response. 

There was a wide grin spread across her face. 

She felt a little guilty for feeling a little happy when he had obviously had a rough day, but she couldn’t help feeling that maybe she’d helped more than she thought she could have. 

“Thanx.”

“Any time.” She wrote back quickly. 

Unfortunately, she gotten busy during the rest of the night and didn’t have a chance to even glance at the journal again until it was time for her to go to bed. She felt stressed and upset about her brother being an overall douche as he always was, and tired of her mom always coming to his defense. She’d been climbing into bed when the journal on her desk caught her eye. 

Dee brought it into the bed with her and opened it up once she was settled in. There had been one more addition since she’d closed it earlier. 

“U r so cool,” He’d scribbled in his messy handwriting. There was a face drawn next to the words with long hair and a smile and a pair of sunglasses over it’s eyes. 

The grin was back on her face and she felt all of her negative feelings brought up by her family just slip away. There were butterflies in her stomach. 

Just as she was about to close the journal, something caught her eye. 

There was another very small heart drawn in the bottom right corner of the page. She might have never noticed it if it hadn’t been by accident. 

Dee picked up her pen and, instead of responding to what he’d written under their last conversation, she simply added another heart next to his. 

Then, she closed the journal. She kissed it lightly on the cover, even if it was a little silly, and then set it on her bedside table. She switched off her lamp and laid down to go to sleep. 

That night she dreamed of the day where she would finally meet him. She could finally know exactly what he had to say and what his thoughts really were. She wouldn’t have to decode anything anymore. She could be with him and he could be with her and they could be together, after living their separate lives that seemed to be equally as difficult. 

One day they’d be together and they could get away from Dee’s family and the people who made fun of him and everything would be right with the world. She just had to hold on until then, until her Happily Ever After.


End file.
